


Bonding

by SlothSpaghetti



Series: Sleepless In Stark Towers [4]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Actually cried a bit this morning when I realised that, Cyberbullying, Developing Relationship, F/M, I fucked up the order of this series, I've lost control of these tags, Pining, So apologies if you have already read that one, Sorry again, This should have come before the break up, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Toxic Relationship, bad boyfriend, rock n roll music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:55:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27041596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlothSpaghetti/pseuds/SlothSpaghetti
Summary: Takes place after 'Dinner At The Tower'.You're laptop finally dies a hero's death, but not without Tony trying to save it for you.
Relationships: Tony Stark/OFC, Tony Stark/Reader
Series: Sleepless In Stark Towers [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965925
Comments: 3
Kudos: 99





	1. Your PoV

**Author's Note:**

> As the chaotic tags explain, this was supposed to be posted before The Breakup, so I am sorry if this confuses you or if that spoiled things a bit. This is mostly a fluffy piece because even my sad sleepless idiots deserve some fun.

I stared at the budget I had started over three years ago when I had gotten my first job. It was a pathetic attempt to plan a life outside of my parents’ reach, to save up enough to move out as soon as possible. Look where it had gotten me now? Making a pros and cons list in a second sheet for becoming some kind of camgirl or stripper. Pros currently included money, increased exercise, and probably praise. Cons, however, were much longer and included things like body shaming, time taken up to work/create a following, shame in general, societal pressure, body hate, anxiety, and fear of being found out. 

My phone said it was three in the morning. I wasn’t supposed to spend so much time on this, it was only supposed to be a half hour's worth of work, but my brick of a computer kept overheating and then freezing. Now it had just shut down for the second time that night. 

“Maybe if I just get hit by a bus, things will get better,” I grumbled at my laptop. 

The kitchen was quiet, Peter had gone to bed shortly after we finished building a tiny replica of the London skyline. Apparently, it had been a gift from Thor, who had recently come back from the British capital. There was a quick photoshoot that followed where we pretended to Godzilla the city, but he was yawning and barely sitting upright so I shooed him off to his room and told him I would clean up. It was the least I could do since he paid for dinner. Well, Tony paid for dinner because all Peter did was ask JARVIS to order a bunch of Chinese food. 

Anyway, I was at a standstill now. My calendar had marked three to seven for sleep so Pete and I could leave together to go to classes, but the guilt of not getting enough done in the day mixed with being here at Stark Towers was making my brain overheat more than my stupid laptop. I picked up my phone and got on Instagram because why not deal with that problem now. 

A red speech bubble bar appeared at the bottom of my screen. At the very top was a post I had been tagged in by that Brooklyn charcoal artist account. “Felt inspired by a recent work from @ThatArtGirl…” The charcoal life drawing depicted a hunched over man with his face hidden in dark shadow, but the harsh light source in the work illuminated stretch marks that covered the chiseled surface of his side and biceps. I immediately liked the image and commented, heart fluttering in my chest. My thumb hovered over the direct message icon for a moment. 

“You probably get these kinda messages all the time, but your art really inspires me to work harder and to really think about the world around me. Thank you for sharing your work with the world…

And if you ever wanna talk about art, I’m always game.”

I went back to the notification screen after sending that stupid cringe message I was sure would be ignored. At the first word, the fluttering in my chest screeched to a halt. The small smile on my face fell and was replaced with my teeth fusing together at my jaw clenched. At the very bottom was one of a handful of comments I’d ever gotten from Nathan.  _ Delete this. _

“What are you still doing up?”

I slammed my phone, screen side, down and my breath caught in the back of my throat. Tony was standing in the entryway, dressed in his jeans and an untucked gray button-down shirt. A blush spread across my cheeks even as I plastered a fake smile on my face. I wanted it to be real, but I felt like I was moments from just falling apart. 

“Sleep is for the weak,” I raised the lukewarm mug of coffee to my lips and tried not to wrinkle my nose at the bitter taste. 

Tony nodded and I made an attempt to turn my laptop back on, anything to keep my mind wandering back to my phone or the man I’d been crushing on senselessly. The screen remained black, even though I knew it was charged. I held the power button down, willing it to boot in any way possible. 

“Do you guys mind if I eat this?” My eyes flicked to him, looking around the door of the fridge and plastic container of fried rice in his hand. 

“You paid for it,” half a smile graced my lips. “Thanks by the way, for dinner and for giving Pete this space and everything. I think he really needed this.”

Tony huffed, not exactly a laugh, but something like that. It was tired and husky. A sound I could drown myself in and die happy because of it. The clattering of cutlery filled the kitchen. It was all too big in that moment and my eye zeroed in discolored keys under my fingers. The ones I’d painted over twice now just in case I somehow forgot how to touch type. Tony cleared his throat, a gentle sound, and looked from my laptop to me back to the device. 

“Do you want me to have a look at that? Unlike Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, you can’t breathe life into a computer with just your fingertips.”

A giggle bubbled up in my stomach and popped out of my mouth. My hand came to rest on my chest, just under the base of my neck as more giggling came out of me. The brilliantly proud smirk that spread across Tony’s face made heat rise from my chest to my cheeks. I took a deep breath through my nose, but the real smile on my face didn’t leave. 

“Sure you don’t have someone waiting for you at home? I don’t wanna keep you away from your family,” my hand remained on my chest, while the other wrapped around my middle. Guarding myself against the blow I had just dealt myself. 

“You aren’t keeping me from anything besides an empty house, Honey. Don’t worry about it, I’m not tired anyway,” he waved his fork at me. “Is there anything on there you need to recover?”

“Uh, no, I keep everything on Google Drive. Too nervous this exact thing would happen.” I dug my middle finger into the soft space above my clavicle, trying to hide the jump in my pulse at the pet name. 

Tony took a few more bite of the cold rice before replacing it in the fridge and dropping the fork in the sink. The traitorous device was handed over to him. Our fingertips brushing, no, ghosting across each other for such a brief moment, I thought I was imagining it. He beckoned me to follow him down the dark hallway back to another lab. This one had one giant workstation but was larger than the lab Peter showed me that first day. Barely lit trophy cases displayed an array of Iron Man suits. I tried not to think about the fact he had just let me into his personal space, the place he clearly worked on  **_his_ ** projects. 

He gestured at the couch near his desk on the wall facing out towards the window and the speckled skyline of the city. I tucked my legs under me and just watched the city, letting my mind run circles around what was happening in my life. My best friend, and probably only friend, was Spider-Man. He worked with the Iron Man, Tony Stark. A man who was a genius and a billionaire before he was even a superhero. A man who was 20 something years older than me. A man who I was crushing on so hard, who was just feet away from me, trying to fix my stupid old laptop at three in the morning, despite the fact he had clearly shut off his own computer and lied about not being tired. A man who wasn’t my boyfriend. 

My boyfriend, who wasn’t supportive or understanding of any part of me. A boy who didn’t listen and talked over me when we were out with his friends. A boy who said he was doing me a favor by agreeing to date me, even though he had kissed me first. A boy who told me he loved me then told me I needed to lose some weight. A boy wouldn’t give me the time of day if it didn’t benefit him. 

A shiver ran down my spine and into my arms and legs. I pulled the rolled-up sleeves of my shirt down until they covered my shaking hands. 

“I’m not sure this hunk a junk is saveable,” Tony sighed, dropping a small screwdriver down next to my dissected laptop. 

“Thanks lookin’ at it anyway, Tony. I really appreciate it,” I stood up and walked over to look at it. 

The deconstructed parts that meant nothing to me were lazily thrown into different piles. Something I recognized as a motherboard because of one episode of How It’s Made, looked rusted and covered in some kind of crumbly teal gunk. I should have taken better care of the thing. I shouldn’t have taken it to the art studio or left it running so much. I couldn’t afford to get a new one right now. Can’t be a camgirl without the cam, so I guessed that job was off the table now. 

“I should take better care of my shit,” I mumbled, picking up some kind of metal card. 

“I’m impressed it survived as long as it has,” Tony pushed away from the desk on his wheelie chair and hunched over a crate filled with a whole bunch of wires and other tech things I really didn’t know anything about. When he turned around again, he stood up.

“Here,” he handed me a thin device. “It’s a couple of years old, but it should be fine for writing papers or Netflix.”

“I-I… thank you.”

I hugged Tony. It was a bit awkward, one-handed and with the laptop smooshed between us, but I really couldn’t think of any other way to thank him in that moment. The top of my head just reached his shoulder and I had to tiptoe to wrap my arm over his shoulder to pull him down into the embrace. 

“I’ll give this back to you when you when I‘ve got a new laptop,” I promised, pulling away from the hug. He blinked for a moment. 

“Keep it, Sweetheart. I’m not gonna use it,” he smiled, turning back to his chair. 

Another blush spread across my cheeks, “I, uh, better let you get back to your work.” 

“You can work in here with me if you don’t mind music,” Tony offered, and I accepted by sitting back down on the couch. “JARVIS put on my workshop playlist, volume 4.”

We worked together as AC/DC, Aerosmith, The Kinks, Black Sabbath and so many other classic rock bands filled the air around us. I finished up budgeting, deciding that I would only eat one meal a day from now on to keep food costs down, then started working on a paper for the art history course I was taking. The echo of fingers tapping away filled the lab between songs. It was surprisingly easy, sitting in the same space as Tony, working on our own things. It was like just his presence made it a bit easier to focus. Or maybe it was the incredible computing power of a computer that was from this decade. Who’s to say?

I couldn’t help rocking my head along to the songs, tapping my foot, and shimming my shoulder along to the beat. These were songs that played all the time on the radio at home. Some of my favorites to turn on while driving on a summer night were 80’s rock n roll hair bands that you could air guitar to while you waited for a light to turn green. Occasionally, I’d mumble along to a song, or I would hear Tony hum to the words with his eyes trained on his screen. 

As the sun began to rise, I closed the lid of my fancy new Stark laptop and wandered over to the window to watch the majesty. It really was just glorious up this high, the shadowing of the skyscrapers intensifying as rays of red and orange light emerged from a distant horizon, forcing the deep blue and purple sky into hiding. I rubbed my fingers around the bags under my eyes and stretched.

It was like JARVIS, the computer that runs the tower Peter had explained, knew what I was thinking. As Fortunate Son ended, the hypnotic melody of Scorpions came blasting through the stereo system. My eyes closed against the sight in front of me and I let the guitar wash over me. Muscle memory took over, my sleep-deprived brain checking out for at least the next few minutes, while my hips swished and bopped to the music. Mouthing the words to myself, not really paying attention, in my own little music video. 

“New place to go, I’ve got to leave. It’s time for a show,” I whipped around and pointed at Tony. “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane!”

He pointed back, standing up, “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane!”

We sang along, moving to the heavy guitar riffs and trying to outdo one another with our exaggerated dancing. And when The Clash came on after, I threw my head back and laughed at the irony. I’d beg Tony to stay here, in this moment or any, forever. I felt so free and good. 

“Darlin' you got to let me know, should I stay or should I go?” He sang to me.

“It’s always teasing, tease, tease.” I caught up with the lyrics. 

Tony smiled, flashing a set of near-perfect white teeth and shaking his head. Serenading, if that is what you could call our singing, one another, our work forgotten and minds turned off to anything else. We switched off who would ask the other if they should stay or go and when it got to the Spanish backing, I caught the surprised look on his face when I started singing that section with ease. 

As the music faded, we both flopped down onto the couch, laughing at the ridiculous show we’d just put on for each other. 

“You have excellent taste in music,” I breathed. 

“Just convince Pete of that, would you? I can’t listen to that Harry Styles fucker anymore.” His shoulder shook in silent laughter.

“I’d have better luck strikin’ gold. He thinks my music choices are shit too,” I grinned. 

More music continued to play in the background as we sat and watched the sun continue to break through the morning clouds, but I wasn’t really paying any attention to it now. 

“What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleeping?” I asked, realizing I was running up to 48 hours again.

“I went 72 hours once, but that was a few years ago,” Tony stared off at the sunset. 

“I did that once over the summer, it got a bit weird. Pete has the videos,” I smirked, what did I care if a man way out of my league saw what a weirdo I was?

The alarm on my phone started going off. I picked up the thing, annoyed, but also secretly happy that it would stop me from blurting out any more secrets. 

“Guess that answers the question,” I hummed, sadness taking over my voice. “I should go.”


	2. Tony's PoV

Fuck your phone alarm. Fuck it being morning. Fuck you leaving for classes with Pete. 

Enclosed in those few hours was probably the closest I’d ever get to having you in my life. Sitting in my lab, on my couch, singing along to music that I liked, while we worked on our projects. It was like having a slice of heaven served to me. You looked so… at home on that couch, working on a machine with my name on it. When the sun started to rise and you stood up, I followed your movements, studying you from behind as you watched the sky wake up. And the dancing, god that had been so fun and goofy, but so sexy too. You moved your body without a care in the world. Shimming and swaying and spinning all while singing along to every word in perfect time. 

“I should have told her to stay,” I muttered from my seat on the couch.


End file.
